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Degree

MS, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geology, 2009.

Abstract

On April 2 2007, an earthquake of M8.0 struck the Solomon Islands. The earthquake caused a large tsunami, resulting in over 40 deaths. Understanding the flow characteristics, destructive potential and recurrence interval for tsunamis such as this one enable future events to be anticipated and adequately planned for in terms of loss of human life, destruction of infrastructure and economic impacts. In areas like the Solomon Islands, which posses a relatively short written history, this kind of information can only be obtained through the geological record, which must be interpreted by first looking at present events and applying them to past events (Jaffe and Gelfenbaum, 2002). Most seminal tsunami recurrence and grain size studies, such as Atwater and Moore (1992), have been done in temperate siliciclastic settings. Flow characteristics inferred from carbonate sediment deposits are much harder to interpret because the shape of the grain is much more important than the size (Maiklem, 1968) (Braithwaite, 1973), making a traditional study of landward fining trends less significant. This study takes the field data I gathered in the Solomon Islands and uses principal component analysis of the sediment data to determine where the sediment is being transported from and say something about how carbonate sediment populations move and interact during a tsunami.

Subject Headings

Experiments; Fluid dynamics; Geology; Soil sciences

Keywords

tsunami; carbonate; Principal Component Analysis

Committee / Advisors

Dr. Joseph Ortiz (Committee Chair)
Dr. Andrew Moore (Advisor)
Dr. Neil Wells (Advisor)

Pages

55p.

Document number: kent1239917497
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1239917497

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